Sun Gone Wild

Solar Attack (2006), a story about the earth’s atmosphere burning up, is about farting.

The sun farts (generically referred to as CME, or “coronal mass emission”) and sends said emission on a collision course with Planet Us. That’s not so bad. But all the farts we’ve been snapping off have created an elevated level of methane gas close to the ozone. That’s not so bad. But the holes in the ozone are big enough to let the CMEs in, where it ignites the methane, which burns like a hard fart and takes out all the oxygen we’re currently recycling. That’s bad.

A radical plan is formulated to extinguish the incoming fire storm: detonate nuclear warheads over the North Pole, thereby sucking up enough water particles into the atmosphere, and hopefully putting out God’s BBQ. U.S. subs don’t have any nuclear warheads in the area that can handle the job. But the Russian sub does. It’s enough to make you fart in your own pants.

Even though it borrows liberally from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (the 1961 movie, not the TV show) with a smattering of TheHunt For Red October (1990)thrown in, Solar Attack has some squeezy moments that’ll keep you from lighting your own farts to see if the theory about methane catching on fire will suck up the atmosphere and kill us all. P.S. You’re thinking about doing that right now, I can tell.